WordCamp Volunteer Guidelines relating to GPL

In the comments on this post a point was raised that warrants further discussion:

A person works for a marketplace that sells non-GPL WordPress products. They want to help organize or volunteer at a WordCamp.

When vetting all Volunteers for a WordCamp we use the 100% GPL vetting checklist and the GPL Primer We define Volunteers as organizers, speakers, and volunteers. We have a belief that our events should reflect the core projects beliefs and philosophies, especially with regard to the GPL. Anyone associated with WordCamps in a Volunteer role is our representative. It is important that they reflect the projects values. We look at all Volunteers and review and WordPress derivative products and ensure that they are GPL. If not, we ask them if they can change the license to GPL. If they cannot, they cannot be a Volunteer at a WordCamp.

The current rule that requires all WordCamp organisers, speakers, sponsors and volunteers to be 100% GPL compatible, extending to the company that they work for, is one that we cannot currently make an exception for. That’s how it is at the moment and individual exceptions cannot be made right now. Which brings me to the second key point…
While I think I can safely say that we will never change the rule that individuals must be GPL compatible in their personal capacity, there is a valuable discussion to be had with regards to how we handle individuals who are personally compatible, but their employer is not. This is the case that @stephencronin explained above with his employment at Envato. As @kcristiano has stated, this is a discussion better held in a dedicated post and I think it is a discussion that we need to have. I’m not sure what the outcome would be at this stage, but we definitely need to talk about it and make a firm decision that both upholds the principles of the WordPress project and remains as inclusive as possible.

I do agree with @hlashbrooke that we should take a look and decide how to handle individuals who are personally compatible with the GPL license, but work for a Company that is not. We’ll hold this post open until April 3rd for comments. Please chime in with your thoughts.

@bridgetwillard Thanks for your input. I agree with you, the current rules state that if volunteer candidate works for an agency that has distributed products that are both non-GPL and WP derivitives, they cannot be a volunteer.

This discussion is to see how the Community feels about allowing an individual who has all their code/products compliant, but work for a company who is not.

Just to note here (before it becomes a point of discussion) that client work is not included in the GPL requirements. The GPL requirements for WordCamps are about WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that are being distributed, either paid or for free. Client work is entirely different as it is not distributed by the developer in any way, so the licence of work you do for clients doesn’t really matter in this case.

I’ve always been opposed to this policy. When someone volunteers to help out at a WordCamp in any capacity, the person is volunteering, not a business. We should never stifle one’s ability to share time, knowledge, or energy in the WordPress community. A person can espouse the core values of WordPress regardless of their business, plugins, or employment. As long as they don’t bring their non-GPL business into a WordCamp setting, there shouldn’t be any issue. Having such a strict policy is alienating in a community that should be welcoming and open.

As long as they don’t bring their non-GPL business into a WordCamp setting, there shouldn’t be any issue

As an organizer I would request that they not represent the company they work for during the event. Honor system.

… those would be the conditions for me, too. In theory.

We would need to have examples on what a violation would look like, as enforcing this might be a bit tricky.

No handing out business cards, except private contact information?

No “Hi, my name is Mildred and I work for [non-gpl-company]”? Rather say “Hi my name is Milred, I work as a [developer/designer/projectmanage]

and their name should not be mentioned?

What else?
What could organizers say to that volunteer?

Is the strict policy in place because everything else seemed too hard to enforce?
One wanted to keep it on the Global Community Team level to take the grieve, keep it away from the organizers as they have enough to organize?

What I feel would be a good way forward (and this has already been suggested, so this is more of a +1 to that than anything else) would be to allow volunteers to be from non-GPL companies just so long as they don’t use their position as volunteers to promote said company in any way. That would be up to the organisers to manage, but I don’t think it would be too much of an additional burden to be honest.

On the other side of it, I really don’t like the idea of changing the current GPL rules for speakers, sponsors or organisers – even if an individual is personally GPL compatible, but their company is not. I feel that if we change that rule (as some people here and elsewhere have suggested we should) then we begin to undermine the basic principles of the WordCamp program and the WordPress project as a whole, which is not a good situation to be in and is a slippery slope for sure.

I think it is ok that the Guidelines accepts employees of non-GPL companies as WordCamp “Volunteer.”

I think Guidelines should not accept them as organizers, speakers, or sponsors. The community team is proud of the fact we have these people representing WordPress.

I feel that it is difficult to prevent people exchange their company business cards.
When finding it, should they be penalized?
I do not like being someone penalized.
But it may occur when expanding the rules.

When finding it, should they be penalized?
I do not like being someone penalized.

Umm, I’ve been penalized for almost 4 years now! 🙂

Giving me a chance to be involved and then removing me if I blow it and can’t follow the rules isn’t penalising me. It’s giving me a chance! Saying I can’t be involved at all…. Now that is penalising me.

I’ve been trying to stay out of this as I’m obviously biased, but, well, here goes.

There is a team forming here in my local area to organise WordCamp again this year. I’d love to be part of it. Honestly, I am not going to volunteer many many many hours to help organise a WordCamp so that I can get publicity for my employer. I’d be doing it because I am a long time community member here, who loves the local community and who wants to help.

Is there a risk that this could lead to increased awareness of my employer? Probably. Let’s look at that. There are three ways I can think of, that people would know who I work for:

1. If I wear my company t-shirt or other branded clothing
2. If I tell them
3. If they google me or follow a link to my Twitter account

The first one is solved by a no branding rule. If I’m organising / speaking, I don’t wear the t-shirt. If I do, then I’m breaking the rules and I’m kicked out, same as anyone else who breaks the rules. Perhaps the local team can vet whether they think the person is a risk? I would assume that in most cases they would know the person from the local meetups.

The second one is tricky. I wouldn’t go out of my way to tell people what I do, but if someone comes up to me at the after party and asks “who do you work for?”, I’m not going to lie. So maybe this is a problem. You’d also need to trust the person wouldn’t go out of their way to tell people. Once again, if the person has been involved in the local community, the local team will probably be able to assess the risk.

The third one is almost impossible to stop.

So yes, there would be some inadvertent promotion of my employer. Looking at the net sum, it would be less promotion than if I couldn’t organise and wore my employer’s t-shirt! But of course in that case I’m just an attendee (I understand that’s less of an issue than it being an organiser).

I have wondered whether it would be worth drawing a line between speaker and organiser, as speakers tend to be more in the public eye and organisers tend to be more behind the scenes. I guess the argument above that it only be for volunteers is based on this. Yes, that probably is the safest course, but of course I’d argue for the line to be drawn so organising is allowed! 🙂

My opinion is that we would need to start in small steps, allowing people in your situation to Volunteer as the first step. I agree not wearing branded clothing would be something we should ask, there is no way to stop the other two items you listed. Nor should we restrict people from speaking about their jobs. if we are to make a change we have to start somewhere and to me starting with volunteers is the right place to start.

I’ve been thinking about how (or if) to respond here for a while, but the tl;dr of it is: knowing several people who are affected by this, but are great community members, penalising them for their employers (past or present) actions has been a thorn in my side for a long time, and I’d like to see any change to allow those affected to be part of the community, so that’s a vote of support from me.

I know several people who have been declined from WordCamp/meetup organiser positions, speaking at, and also volunteering at them.
These people are great examples of community members who love WordPress and simply want to help grow the community. They’re not doing it for their employers benefit, they’re doing it in their own time for the love of the project and community.

Discriminating against these community members purely because of their employers actions (past or present) isn’t something that I’ve ever been comfortable with, but have been forced to due to the rules as written.
While I understand the reasoning behind the current guidelines, I think it’s about time that we modernise them to be more inclusive – but while not compromising on our core values.

If these community members were to act in any position other than purely an attendee, requesting them to not advertise the company in any form (No swag, no company names on slides if allowed to speak or organise, not promoting company products, etc) is simple enough and most of those in the community who just want to help make WordPress better would happily abide by those “terms of engagement”.
(Site note: We happily accept Core Patches and Plugin/Themes from these compliant individuals)

We already ask that exact question of volunteers/speakers/organisers after all (not wearing swag from, mentioning by name, or promoting non-gpl-compliant products), so extending that to these community members IMHO aligns us more with the reality of existing communities and expectations from the broader community.

Thanks to all for the comments on this thread. There was more agreement than disagreement that Volunteers should be evaluated on their personal compliance with the GPl as opposed to their companies.

A few key quotes I have taken away are:

@jeffreyzinn
When someone volunteers to help out at a WordCamp in any capacity, the person is volunteering, not a business.

@hlashbrooke
What I feel would be a good way forward (and this has already been suggested, so this is more of a +1 to that than anything else) would be to allow volunteers to be from non-GPL companies just so long as they don’t use their position as volunteers to promote said company in any way.

@stephencronin
I have wondered whether it would be worth drawing a line between speaker and organiser, as speakers tend to be more in the public eye and organisers tend to be more behind the scenes. I guess the argument above that it only be for volunteers is based on this. Yes, that probably is the safest course, but of course I’d argue for the line to be drawn so organising is allowed

However, there are concerns that are quite valid.

@hlashbrooke
On the other side of it, I really don’t like the idea of changing the current GPL rules for speakers, sponsors or organisers – even if an individual is personally GPL compatible, but their company is not. I feel that if we change that rule (as some people here and elsewhere have suggested we should) then we begin to undermine the basic principles of the WordCamp program and the WordPress project as a whole, which is not a good situation to be in and is a slippery slope for sure.

@_dorsvenabili
I’d be worried about the implementation of this new guideline:

How the organizers are going to handle in-situ issues like the volunteer wearing a t-shirt of his company, giving his company branded visit card, discounts, flyers, etc.
I’d be worried about putting that preassure to the WC organizers during the event.

It’s fitting that the last comment seems to sum up what I think is the best path forward:

@dd32
Discriminating against these community members purely because of their employers actions (past or present) isn’t something that I’ve ever been comfortable with, but have been forced to due to the rules as written.
While I understand the reasoning behind the current guidelines, I think it’s about time that we modernise them to be more inclusive – but while not compromising on our core values.

While we as a Community have discussed what we think should be done with GPL Guidelines for Volunteers, there are serious concerns about altering this policy in any way. In this case, I believe that in order to move forward without compromising our core values will require a working group to detail how we can affect a change to the GPL requirements and how we can (or cannot) implement it.

Community Deputy Program

Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Here are some useful links about the program: